Fall sweet potato cake

Italy is facing a debt crisis.

Our scandal-plagued Prime Minister, as the New York Times defines him, has promised to finally step down.

Local news + a job in finance + Q3 reporting season= pretty crazy days in the office.

Not much time to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather and autumn sunshine (that followed the copious amounts of destructive rain).

Yet I love the fall with its orange and yellow hues and its promise of the approaching holiday season. I thoroughly enjoy those first soups and stews, a warm cup of tea to warm my hands after biking back from work in the crisp air.

I have been buying pumpkins, sweet potatoes and eyeing chestnuts at the supermarket.  The other day I was tempted not to make my daughter taste her food, a rule in our household, before pushing away her helping of oven roasted sweet potatoes, so eager was I to bite into that crispy salty exterior and that pillowy, sweet interior. I mean, what kid does not like sweet potatoes? I knew I had to come up with another way to use up the second huge sweet potato I had bought, another way to lure my daughter and her father into enjoying this particular ingredient. My son didn’t need convincing. That a-boy!

That is how this sweet potato cake was born. It is moist, it has a lovely crumb. It is filled with the smells and flavors of this season. We get white sweet potatoes here, but if you make it with the orange variety, you will get the color of fall too. You can drizzle it with glaze or keep it simple like I did. With every bite, you will feel like you are walking down a New England road, the rustle of colored leaves underfoot, a canopy of flaming orange and red above your head. This recipe makes a big cake that keeps perfectly for a week, so you can take a walk through the blazing foliage every morning before you start your day, wherever you are.

Oh, I didn't convince my daughter (although she loved the batter) but F loved the cake and so did my son. You can't win 'em all!

Ingredients
2 cups brown sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups fresh/canned sweet potatoes 

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 eggs

3 cups flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

If you are using fresh sweet potatoes, like I did, put them in boiling water and let them cook until tender.

Preheat oven to 350° F/175°C). Grease and flour a 10 inch tube/Kugelhopf pan.

Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy and then add the sweet potato puree and vanilla extract. Beat the mixture until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time and then the flour mixture. Beat at low speed until combined. Put the batter into your baking pan. Bake for a little over an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan for a while and then turn onto a serving dish.

Adapted from here.